Taiwan is the kind of society that Liu Xiaobo envisioned for China

What a New Sculpture Reveals About Tensions Between China and Taiwan

By SUYIN HAYNES/TAIPEI

A sculpture of the Chinese Nobel peace prize recipient Liu Xiaobo who passed away one year ago can be seen outside City Hall on July 13, 2018, in Taipei, Taiwan.

Artist Aihua Cheng has worked feverishly for the past four months in her scenic Baisha Bay studio on Taiwan’s northern coast. 

For her latest project, the oil painter and sculptor read the extended works of the late Chinese Nobel Peace Laureate Liu Xiaobo—while creating a three-part sculpture dedicated to the writer and dissident, who died as a political prisoner last year. 

“I completed the work just yesterday,” she told TIME, shortly before her creation was shown to the public for the first time outside Taipei’s city hall on July 13.
Titled I Have No Enemies, Cheng’s piece incorporates a line drawing of Liu looking out over a bronze open book inscribed with his writings. 

“I hope that his books and thoughts can continue impacting China,” she says. 

Unveiled on the one-year anniversary of Liu’s death, the sculpture was planned by exiled democracy activist Wu’er Kaixi as a tribute to his former mentor. 

“Taiwanese people joining us in erecting this sculpture are telling China that we have not forgotten our values,” says Wu’er, who was forced to flee China after the Tiananmen Square protests and settled in Taiwan in 1996.
That message will resonate with many on this island, which began to embrace democracy after nearly four decades of martial law ended in 1987. 

The mainland still views Taiwan, an island of 23 million people that lies 112 miles off China’s coast, as its sovereign territory despite the island’s breakaway in 1949 at the end of the Chinese Civil War.
Supported by Reporters Without Borders, the crowdfunded sculpture project is intended to represent the ideals of freedom and democracy championed by Liu in his co-authored Charter 08 manifesto. 

Liu encouraged Chinese citizens to envisage a democratic future, “a modern means for achieving government truly ‘of the people, by the people, and for the people.’” 

That document ultimately led to his arrest in 2009, his Nobel Peace Prize the following year and his imprisonment until he died from late-stage liver cancer.
But the commemoration of a Chinese dissident comes at a time when tensions with Beijing are already running high. 

Taiwan is struggling for international recognition as China ramps up efforts to isolate the island. 

The day after the statue was unveiled, the head of China’s Taiwan Affairs office released a statement saying that “the vain separatist attempts for ‘Taiwan independence’ will only lead to a dead end.” Add an unpredictable U.S. President and a snowballing trade war between the world’s two biggest economies into the mix and you have a cross-strait relationship that is more fragile—and perhaps more dangerous—than ever.
When the news of Liu’s death was announced last year, Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen tweeted a statement expressing Taiwan’s hopes that Chinese people could one day “enjoy the God-given rights of freedom and democracy.” 

The statement, issued in both Chinese and English, was seen as an affront to Beijing—much like Tsai’s presidential victory in January 2016.
Tsai’s Democratic Progressive Party promised “an era of new politics in Taiwan,” breaking with the Nationalist Party (KMT) government policy, which favored closer ties with China. 

Under the 1992 Consensus, China and Taiwan agreed that there is one China—allowing each other to disagree about the status of Taiwan. 

Tsai’s election changed that. 

Her party supports independence and refuses to acknowledge the Consensus. 

Since Tsai took office in May 2016, China’s dictator Xi Jinping has not met with her but has continued relations with the KMT opposition party.
The lack of any diplomatic relations with Beijing does not seem to have deterred Tsai.

“She will continue to build on the belief that democracy can be integrated into an ethnically Chinese society and the idea that Taiwan can be an example to China in this sense,” says Sheryn Lee, a lecturer in security studies at Macquarie University.
Taiwan looks like the kind of society that Liu Xiaobo envisioned for China. That makes tributes to him contentious. 

According to Reuters, supporters of him and his widow Liu Xia were pressured by Chinese authorities to not hold any commemoration events. 

And although Liu Xia was released from eight years of house arrest on July 10, the move came amid a growing crackdown on dissidents in China. 

A day later, China sentenced prominent democracy activist Qin Yongmin to 13 years of imprisonment for “subversion of state power.”
As well as quashing dissent at home, Xi’s newly consolidated grip on power has allowed him to increase pressure on Taiwan—just as Tsai is trying to strengthen her position ahead of midterm elections in November. 

“Beijing probably wants to remind the Taiwanese public that they are paying a price for supporting Tsai and her party,” says Richard C. Bush, former Chairman of the American Institute in Taiwan, the island’s de facto U.S. embassy.
A visible reminder of that price is the ratcheting up of military actions in the Taiwan Strait. 

In April, Chinese state media reported that the navy held its largest ever military display in a spectacular show of force in the South China Sea as well as the first naval military exercises with live fire drills in the strait since 2015.
Analysts say such exercises signal Beijing’s intention to send a message to the U.S. amid rising trade tensions and closer ties to Taiwan. 

While the U.S. formally endorses the “one China” policy, it has had an unofficial relationship with Taiwan since 1979. 

And President Donald Trump has broken an un-precedented series of protocols since his Inauguration, such as accepting a congratulatory phone call from Tsai; passing the Taiwan Travel Act, which encourages U.S. officials to visit the island; and unveiling a new $250 million de facto embassy building in Taipei. 

“No one really expected the level of interference that Trump had. He broke all of the rules that have been set down with China-Taiwan relations,” says Lee.

These moves have also been accompanied by gestures of U.S. military support for Taiwan, right under Beijing’s nose. 

Last year, Trump approved a deal to sell Taiwan $1.42 billion worth of arms in a massive deal that was immediately condemned by China. 

On July 7, two U.S. warships passed through the Taiwan Strait—merely a day after Washington imposed tariffs on $34 billion of Chinese imports in the last shot fired in the superpower showdown.
Despite Trump’s seemingly strong commitment to Taiwan, the backdrop of a trade war has nevertheless worried local politicians. 

“We share the same fundamental values as the U.S.,” says Huang Kuo-chang, chairman of the pro-independence New Power Party. 

“But we are not so naive as to be unable to understand that sometimes we become the bargaining chip between China and the United States.”
China has also accelerated efforts to diplomatically isolate the island. 

Since taking office, Tsai has lost allies in Burkina Faso, the Dominican Republic, Panama, and São Tomé and Príncipe, leaving only 18 others worldwide. 

“Some say that in a few years, the number of allies Taiwan has could drop to zero,” says Rwei-Ren Wu, a research fellow at Taipei’s Academia Sinica. 

A prominent advocate for Taiwanese independence, Wu was barred from entering Hong Kong to speak at a conference last year.
Taiwan aspires to be a member of the U.N., but is not officially recognized. 

In May, for the second year in a row, it was denied access to the World Health Organization’s annual assembly—a move denounced by both Tsai’s government and independent watchdogs as a surrender to pressure from Beijing.
That pressure has started to affect private companies. 

In recent months, airlines and retailers have clashed with Beijing over references to disputed territories, including Taiwan and Tibet. 

In January, authorities shut down the Chinese websites of Marriott International after it listed Taiwan as an individual nation; in May, Gap apologized for a T-shirt with a map of China that omitted Taiwan. 

Beijing has also demanded that foreign airlines edit references to Taiwan to reflect the island as part of the mainland. 

Dismissed by the White House as “Orwellian nonsense,” U.S. airlines including Delta and American now have a July 25 deadline to comply with Beijing’s line on the issue.
In Taipei, the memorial sculpture is accompanied by an empty chair, symbolizing Liu’s absence at the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize ceremony because of his imprisonment. 

Cheng acknowledges that a sculpture alone is unlikely to impact China. 

“But I think the words, the thoughts of Liu Xiaobo will,” Cheng says. 

The sculpture—previewed only briefly on July 13—is still waiting on permanent approval from the city. 

For Taiwan too, the road ahead looks uncertain. 

“There is no reason for us to be treated as second-class global citizens,” says Huang. 

“If our goodwill toward China is unilateral, what do we gain from maintaining the status quo?”

Liu Xia: widow of Nobel laureate arrives in Berlin after eight years under house arrest

By Lily Kuo in Beijing Philip Oltermann in Berlin

Liu Xia smiles as she arrives at Helsinki airport on her way to Berlin.

Liu Xia, the widow of the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, has arrived in Berlin, having left Beijing after almost eight years of living under house arrest and days before the anniversary of her husband’s death.
At 4.49pm (1539 BST) on Tuesday a Finnair flight carrying the poet and visual artist touched down at Tegel airport in the German capital, where Liu is reported to be seeking medical aid.
Human rights activists and friends of Liu had confirmed her departure from Beijing earlier on Tuesday. 

According to Human Rights Watch, the German government negotiated Liu’s release.
“Ever since her late husband received the Nobel peace prize while in a Chinese prison, Liu Xia was also unjustly detained. The German government deserves credit for its sustained pressure and hard work to gain Liu Xia’s release,” said Sophie Richardson, the China director at Human Rights Watch.
Chinese authorities have insisted that Liu, who was not formally charged with any crime, has been free to move as she wishes, but her supporters say she has been under de facto house arrest.
Liu’s husband, Liu Xiaobo, was awarded the Nobel prize in 2010 for his activism in China. 

He was jailed in 2009 for subversion, for his involvement in Charter 08, a manifesto calling for reforms. 

He died last year from liver cancer while serving an 11-year prison sentence.

People wait at Berlin airport to welcome Liu Xia. 

Patrick Poon, a China researcher for Amnesty International, said Liu had been allowed to leave China but her brother, Liu Hui, has had to remain in Beijing. 

He was convicted on fraud charges over a real-estate dispute in 2013, a case activists believed to be retribution against the family.
“It’s really wonderful that Liu Xia is finally able to leave China after suffering so much all these years,” Poon said. 

“However, it’s worrying that her brother, Liu Hui, is still kept in China. Liu Xia might not be able to speak much for fear of her brother’s safety.”

Liu Xiaobo, Nobel laureate and political prisoner, dies at 61 in Chinese custody.

Liu Hui posted on WeChat that his sister had flown to Europe to “start her new life”. 

He wrote: “I am grateful for people’s concern and assistance these past years.”
News of Liu’s release came one day after the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, met with Li Keqiang, in Bremerhaven, inviting speculation about whether the development was part of a broader diplomatic deal. 

China and Germany have in recent months become the two main targets of a US president threatening trade tariffs on industrial imports.
“Is Liu Xia’s release all about softening up the German chancellor, as one of the most important representatives of the liberal industrial nations, in order to form a joint front against Trump?”, wrote the German weekly Die Zeit. 

“It’s an ugly suspicion, but one that can’t be dismissed out of hand.”

“Of course I am very happy that finally she’s gained her freedom and could leave China, but this does not mean China has made any improvements on human rights,” said Hu Ping, a US-based editor and friend of Liu’s.
Since last year, activists, diplomats and friends of Liu have been lobbying especially hard for her release. 

Hu said Liu was told in May she may be able to leave in July. 

Li’s visit to Germany and the signing of $23.6bn (£1.98bn) in trade deals do not seem to him to be a coincidence. 

“This might be why she was able to leave now,” he said.
Another friend of Liu’s told the German news agency Dpa that Germany had been consistently lobbying for the artist’s release over the last four years and kept contact with her via its Beijing embassy. 

“Merkel’s visit [to China] in May was apparently crucial for the release,” the anonymous friend is quoted as saying.
Friends and advocates had been calling for Liu’s release so she could seek medical help for severe depression. 

In May the Chinese writer Liao Yiwu released a recording of a phone call in which Liu described the mental torture of her situation. 

“If I can’t leave, I’ll die in my home,” she said.
One of the last times she was seen in public was in July last year, when she scattered the ashes of her late husband at sea. 

While under house arrest, both of her parents died and she has been hospitalised at least twice for a heart condition.
Frances Eve, a researcher at Chinese Human Rights Defenders, said: “Hopefully she will be able to recuperate and receive much-needed medical care, but China is effectively holding her brother hostage so she may not speak out about her ordeal. The Chinese government has already shown its willingness to ruthlessly deploy collective punishment against their family.”

The Great Dictator

Xi Jinping should heed the lessons from history, former official says
By Simon Denyer

Bao Tong, the most senior Communist party official to be jailed for sympathizing with the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, at his apartment in Beijing. 

BEIJING — Twice Bao Tong rose within the Chinese Communist Party’s hierarchy, and twice he was dramatically cut down. 

He has endured long spells in jail and “re-education” for failing to fall into line behind the hard-liners holding power.
So it is perhaps no surprise that this 85-year-old views the Chinese president’s latest attempt to impose his dogma on the entire nation — under the banner of Xi Jinping Thought — with a considerable degree of skepticism.
“In China’s history of more than 3,000 years, there were other leaders who tried to use their own thoughts to regulate the thoughts of others,” he said in an interview in his modest Beijing apartment. “But none were successful. There were only failed attempts.”
Bao was the most senior Communist Party official to be incarcerated for sympathizing with the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, thrown into jail May 28, a week before a military crackdown that left hundreds if not thousands dead.
He was to remain in solitary confinement for seven years, and even today lives under constant surveillance, with three agents following him on foot and others in a car whenever he leaves his home. 

Yet he still manages an occasional interview with the foreign media, his manner affable, his opinions trenchant, and with a cigarette never far from his lips.
In the late 1980s, Bao had worked as a top aide to Communist Party General Secretary Zhao Ziyang, helping push China in a more liberal, reformist direction — until the June 4 crackdown ended that dream. 

Zhao was demoted, purged and placed under house arrest for expressing sympathy for the students’ demands and opposing Deng Xiaoping’s decision to send in the troops.
Bao was thrown into Beijing’s maximum-security Qincheng Prison, a destination for many of the nation’s most important political prisoners.
Today, a photograph of Zhao sits proudly on a shelf in his apartment, and he talks affectionately of a man who “treated everyone as equals” and wanted to turn over decision-making power from the party to the people.
There is no such affection in his comments about Xi Jinping, whom he describes as a “hard-liner” and a throwback to Mao Zedong.
Last month, the Communist Party enshrined Xi’s name in its constitution as it granted him five more years in power: Xi Jinping Thought now sits alongside Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiaoping Theory in the party’s ideological canon.
“It is called Xi Jinping Thought, the new thought, but they are just old ideas, not new ideas,” said Bao. 

“Ideas like ‘the party leads everything’ — they are exact quotes from Mao Zedong. Why call them new ideas?”
Bao knows only too well the madness that can be unleashed when one man rises to absolute power over the Chinese people, and when officials are too scared to tell him when he is wrong.
“The mistakes Mao made were all huge,” he said. 

“Mao didn’t recognize his mistake when the Great Leap Forward led to a famine that caused millions of deaths; he didn’t recognize his mistake in the Cultural Revolution in which tens of millions were purged.”
In 1966, only days after the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, Bao, who was working as a bureaucrat, was denounced as a “capitalist roader.”
Barred from his office, he spent a year cleaning toilets, another year doing hard labor in a re-education camp and the better part of a decade working the fields of rural China. 

He was only rehabilitated, like millions of others, after Mao’s death in 1976.
“There was only one slogan at that time — ‘Down with anyone who opposes Chairman Mao,’ ” he said. 

“But in the end Mao failed, too. He failed so badly his wife was labeled a counterrevolutionary, and so he himself became part of a counterrevolutionary family.”
Mao’s widow Jiang Qing was arrested after his death for her role in the Cultural Revolution and sentenced to life imprisonment, finally committing suicide in 1991.
Bao also draws lessons from much further back in his nation’s history to warn of the dangers of unchecked power, starting with King Li of the Zhou dynasty, who ruled in the 9th century B.C. 

The General History of China, an 18th-century text by French Jesuit historian Jean-Baptiste Du Halde, describes Li as proud, conceited and cruel.
Indeed, so conscious was he of how much he was hated, he forbade his subjects “on pain of death to converse together, or even whisper to one another,” Du Halde wrote, so that people could be seen walking the streets with downcast eyes, “in mournful silence.”
Eventually, peasants and soldiers rose up against Li, and he died in exile.
Emperor Qin Shi Huang is remembered as the first ruler of a united China in the 3rd century B.C., and for his mausoleum guarded by the Terracotta Army, but he also banned and burned books, and executed scholars.
The Hongwu Emperor, who established the Ming dynasty in the 14th century, expected total obedience from his subjects, inflicting torture and death on those who opposed him, including, it is said, some of his own advisers.
But in the end, Bao said, these rulers’ dynasties foundered and were overthrown.
“If you want to imitate Chairman Mao, that’s okay, but the problem is whether you will succeed,” Bao said, referring to Xi. 

“I can’t say whether his attempt will succeed or not. Only time will tell.”
Bao blames Deng for ending the dream of political change in China, and for instigating an era of corruption and growing economic inequality that “broke” Chinese society.
But he has no faith in Xi’s anti-corruption campaign, which the government says has led to some form of punishment for more than a million officials.
“It’s a selective anti-corruption campaign. Its nature is the selective protection of corruption,” he said. 

“When you purge some corrupt officials, you are protecting the others. You protect the corrupt system, and you protect corrupt people who support you.”
Bao was one of the first signatories of Charter 08, a manifesto for democratic changes issued in late 2008. 

The only way to fight corruption properly, he says, is for independent supervision of the effort.
“Power tends to corrupt,” he said, quoting Britain’s Lord Acton, “and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Criminal Nation

Malala condemns China over death of fellow Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo
By Paul Carsten

Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai 
ABUJA -- Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai condemned China's treatment of her fellow peace prize-winner Liu Xiaobo following his death of liver cancer in custody last week.
Liu, 61, was jailed for 11 years in 2009 for "inciting subversion of state power" after he helped write a petition known as "Charter 08" calling for sweeping political reforms in China.
Liu's incarceration meant he was unable to collect his Nobel Peace Prize in 2010, and he became the second winner of it to die in state custody, the first being Carl von Ossietzky in Germany in 1938. Liu's wife Liu Xia remains under effective house arrest.
"I condemn any government who denies people's freedom," Yousafzai, 20, a Pakistani education activist who came to prominence when a Taliban gunman shot her in the head in 2012, told Reuters at a school in the northeastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri.
"I'm hoping that people will learn from what he (Liu) did and join together and fight for freedom, fight for people's rights and fight for equality," she said.
Yousafzai's trip to Nigeria was aimed at raising awareness of education problems in Africa's most populous country where over 10.5 million children are out of school, more than anywhere else in the world.

Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai speaks during an exclusive interview with Reuters in Maiduguri, Nigeria.

The issue is felt more severely in the mainly Muslim north. 

The south has over the decades seen greater investment and a system of schools started by Christian pastors affiliated with British colonists.
Nigeria needs to "increase spending on education and they need to make it public, the rate of spending planned and how much they're spending," said Yousafzai. 

Since her first trip to Nigeria three years ago, the proportion of the budget allocated to education has dropped from above 10 percent to around 6 percent, she said.
The eight-year Islamist insurgency of Boko Haram, whose name roughly means "Western education is forbidden," has compounded problems with education in Nigeria's north.
The militants have destroyed hundreds of schools and uprooted millions, forcing them into refugee camps which often lack the most basic necessities, let alone decent schooling.
On Monday, Malala called on Nigeria's acting president, Yemi Osinbajo, to call a state of emergency for the country's education.
"Nigeria in the north has been suffering through conflicts as well and extremism," she said.
"So it is important in that sense as well that they prioritize education in order to protect the future."

Democratic world must stand united after Liu Xiaobo's death

Dissident's passing serves as chilling reminder of China's human rights record

Nikkei

A vigil for Liu Xiaobo is held outside the Chinese consulate in Sydney on July 14. 
One of the great symbols of the struggle for democracy in China has died. 

Nobel Peace laureate Liu Xiaobo was unyielding in his fight for the betterment of his country and his passing is a great loss to its citizens. 

He was 61.
A lifelong advocate of nonviolence, Liu continuously called for constitutional democracy in China. He was serving an 11-year prison term for "inciting subversion of state power," and denied access to treatment overseas for terminal liver cancer.
He may have died in hospital, but in essence his life ended behind bars. 

It is unclear whether Liu was provided adequate medical care, and the opaque circumstances raise questions about the responsibility of the Chinese government.
As a literary critic, Liu explored problems stemming from China's long-standing authoritarian rule from a cultural perspective. 

In 1989, he went on hunger strike during the Tiananmen Square protests, and was detained after government troops cracked down on the demonstrators, resulting in numerous fatalities.

In this recent undated handout photo, Liu is fed by his wife, Liu Xia, in a Chinese hospital. He was not allowed to leave the country to receive treatment for liver cancer. 

In 2008, he played a leading role in compiling the "Charter 08" manifesto calling for an end to one-party rule and other constitutional reforms. 

He was sentenced in 2009.
There is now a considerable risk that events in Tiananmen Square are being largely forgotten by many Chinese. 

Students in mainland China are unaware of key events that have been kept hidden from the public. The youth of the world's second-largest economy have little or no knowledge of the contemporary history of their own country.
In 2010, Liu was not permitted to travel to Oslo to receive the Nobel Peace Prize he was awarded while in prison and the image of his empty chair at the ceremony made headlines worldwide.
Reacting angrily to the decision of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which is appointed by the country's government, Beijing placed de facto curbs on salmon imports from Norway. 

Applying pressure on another country over matters such as a peace award by leveraging greater purchasing power is in no way considered acceptable by the international community.
The case of Liu Xiaobo is far from the only example of human rights violations in China. 

In July 2015, human rights lawyers and activists were detained across the country. 

Under Xi Jinping, the Chinese leadership has been even more authoritarian than previous regimes in exercising control over expression and information. 

Under the circumstances, Liu's death is an even more significant loss for the Chinese people.
Successive U.S. administrations have been vocal, and often active, in taking a stand against China's human rights record. 

Since the inauguration of Donald Trump, however, Washington has fallen silent on the matter. 

It is now time for democracies around the world, including Japan and other Asian countries, to unite in decrying human rights violations in China.

The death of Liu Xiaobo marks dark times for dissent in China

By Ishaan Tharoor 

It has been a week since the death of Liu Xiaobo, the famed Chinese dissident who was awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize for Peace while imprisoned.
Late last month, Chinese officials announced that the prominent writer, who had been detained since 2009, was being moved to a hospital to receive treatment for late-stage liver cancer. 

Despite the entreaties of his family, friends and foreign governments, Beijing refused to release him to seek care overseas. 

He died July 13, becoming only the second Nobel laureate to perish in custody (Carl von Ossietzky, an anti-Nazi pacifist, died in 1938).
In a move that sparked the ire of Chinese activists, authorities apparently ensured that his ashes were buried at sea and not on Chinese soil. 

Acclaimed artist Ai Weiwei, who lives in Germany, said the move was aimed at denying Liu’s supporters “a physical memorial site” and that it “showed brutal society can be.”
“It is a play,” said Ai. 

“Sad but real.”

Liu Xiaobo’s wife, Liu Xia, prays as his ashes are buried at sea off the coast of Dalian, China, on July 15.

Indeed, for China’s authoritarian leadership, what Liu represents is all too real. 

The poet and essayist was admired by many among the Chinese diaspora and the international community. 

“He fought for freedom and democracy for more than 30 years, becoming a monument to morality and justice and a source of inspiration,” Wen Kejian, a fellow writer, told my colleague Emily Rauhala.
“Liu Xiaobo was a representative of ideas that resonate with millions of people all over the world, even in China. These ideas cannot be imprisoned and will never die,” said Berit Reiss-Andersen, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, in a statement.
Ironically Liu’s legacy and oeuvre are more visible abroad than at home, where even Internet searches of his name are censored and tributes to his life were hurriedly erased from social media.
But what further underscores the tragedy of his life was the nature of his politics. 

Liu was not calling for radical change or an overthrow of the regime. 

The putative reason for his 2009 imprisonment was his co-authorship of “Charter 08,” a manifesto calling for reform and greater freedom of expression within the Chinese system.
“Inevitably, some in the West will think that honoring Liu Xiaobo is an act of offense against China (or, more practically, a potential risk to relationships with the government). That’s a mistake,” wrote Evan Osnos, author of the National Book Award-winning “Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China.” 

“Honoring Liu is an act of dedication to China at its best. He was, to the end, unwilling to renounce his principled commitment to China’s constitution — to the freedoms enshrined in law but unprotected in practice.”
Osnos also offered an anecdote from when he met Liu: “If you never had a chance to meet him, it was easy to misread him as a cynic. On the contrary, in person, Liu could be unnervingly optimistic. On that day when I met him, in 2007, at a teahouse near his apartment, he told me that as China became stronger and more connected to the world, he imagined that the ‘current regime might become more confident.’ He went on, ‘It might become milder, more flexible, more open.’ In that prediction, he was, for now, wrong, and he paid with his life.”

People sign their names at a memorial event for late Chinese Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo in Hong Kong on July 19. 

“Although the regime of the post-Mao era is still a dictatorship, it is no longer fanatical but rather a rational dictatorship that has become increasingly adept at calculating its interests,” Liu once said in 2006, in another illustration of his optimism about the capacity for change.
“In calculating those interests, the regime has decided that it was safer to turn Liu into a dead martyr than to allow his ideas to spread unchallenged,” wrote Jamil Anderlini of the Financial Times. 

“This conclusion is probably correct in the short term. Thanks to the party’s efforts, the vast majority of Chinese people have never heard of Liu and most of those who have heard of him think he was a hopeless troublemaker. His death will not spark a revolution.”

Under Xi Jinping, the invasive, authoritarian control of the ruling government has expanded, while the space for civil society has contracted. 

Dissent and critical expression have been chilled, and it seems increasingly clear that Chinese officials aren’t bothered by censure from abroad.
“What is really important isn’t so much that the party is tightening its control — that is happening anyway,” noted Steve Tsang of the Chatham House think tank in London. 

“What is more important is that the party is not that worried about how the Liu Xiaobo case affects international opinion.” 

A budding global hegemon, China can withstand the clucking of outside powers over its human rights record.
It also doesn’t help that there is an American president who has explicitly argued against fighting for universal values and rights elsewhere. 

On the day of Liu’s death, Trump happened to hail Xi as a “terrific” and “talented” leader.
“It is especially shameful that Donald Trump praised Xi Jinping at the moment when Liu Xiaobo was dying,” said Teng Biao, a Chinese human rights lawyer living in exile in the United States. 

“Xi Jinping is not a respectable leader. He is a brutal dictator.”
“Western countries have adopted a policy of appeasement,” said Hu Jia, a prominent dissident who served more than three years in prison, to the New York Times. 

“The Communist Party has the resources to whip whomever they want.”
Hu, who still faces regular surveillance from police, offered an ominous warning: “Some have turned to believe in violent revolution. It makes people feel the door to a peaceful transition has closed.”

Kowtowing to China’s despots

Paying The Price Of Chinese Business ‘Partners’

Byy Larry M. Elkin

A portrait of Liu Xiaobo at the Nobel Peace Center in 2010. 

Two stories juxtaposed in the news late last week show just what it means to have China as a business “partner.”
First came word that famous dissident and Nobel Prize winner Liu Xiaobo died in a Chinese prison hospital, where he was suffering from liver cancer, at age 61. 

Both a German doctor and an American doctor recently examined Liu and pronounced him fit to travel abroad for treatment, which many Western governments urged China to allow. 

The Chinese government disputed the Western doctors’ findings, however, declaring Liu too ill to travel.
Beijing was never going to let Liu go, regardless of his state of health. 

His prompt death will surely be cited by his captors as evidence that they were right about his condition. 

Hardly anyone outside China will take such a claim at face value, when Liu’s death was so conveniently timed to remove a problem for the regime.
Liu had been in custody since late 2008 for his part in drafting Charter 08, a call for democratic, multi-party elections and the recognition of Chinese citizens’ human and civil rights. 

Not only did China refuse to let Liu accept his Nobel Prize in 2010, but the government did its utmost to ensure any Chinese invitee could not attend. 

It also threatened to retaliate against governments, including Norway, that it viewed as celebrating Liu’s recognition. 

Even before Charter 08, Liu had been an active voice for governmental reform since the Tiananmen protests of 1989. 

As The Wall Street Journal observed, Liu was the first Nobel Peace laureate to die in custody since 1938, when Carl von Ossietzky died in a prison hospital in Nazi Germany.
The second news item also appeared in The Wall Street Journal. 

The news outlet reported that Western companies face a major obstacle to introducing self-driving cars in China: The country won’t let them map its roads. 

Chinese mapping is done under licenses issued only to Chinese companies, 13 of them to date. 

Even Google Maps, ubiquitous in so much of the world, is restricted to use on desktop computers – not especially handy for turn-by-turn directions. 

These restrictions are in place for national security reasons, according to the government.
In contrast to the assertions about Liu’s medical condition, I am inclined to take this one at face value – just not in the way China presumably intends. 

Advanced weapons used by America and its allies have all the precise guidance they need; they don’t require Waze to find the places they need to go. 

On the other hand, if China’s citizens ever rise up against the country’s self-appointed and self-perpetuating ruling class, we can be sure that one of the government’s first counterrevolutionary steps will be to sharply restrict travel – and to turn off the mapping software that could guide everything from flash mobs to rogue soldiers driving tanks.
National security, indeed.
So, under the circumstances, will Western car companies walk away from the Chinese market? 

Not a chance. 

Robert Bosch GmbH, a German auto supplier, has already announced a partnership with Chinese mapping firms, according to the Journal. 

South Korea’s Hyundai Motors has also said it will work with one of China’s licensed mappers, and GM may not be far behind. 

Volvo may likewise follow, although that prominent brand with Swedish roots is now owned by a Chinese conglomerate. 

If history is any indication, few in the autonomous car industry will walk away from the huge consumer market that China represents, regardless of the draconian restrictions involved.
Like virtually every other Western industry – other than defense – over the past three decades, the makers of self-driving cars will kowtow to China’s rulers and take whatever crumbs happen to drop off the country’s economic banquet table. 

The shame this choice entails will only be briefly highlighted by the death in captivity of the fearless Nobel Prize laureate who devoted his entire adult life to the liberation of his nation, currently held captive by itself.

Liu Xiaobo: A Voice of Freedom

By JAMES A. DORN

The death of Liu Xiaobo from liver cancer on July 13, under guard at a hospital in Shenyang, marks the passing of a great defender of freedom—a man who was willing to speak truth to power. 

As the lead signatory to Charter 08, which called for the rule of law and constitutional government, Liu was sentenced to 11 years in prison for “inciting the subversion of state power.” 

Before his sentencing in 2009, Liu stood before the court and declared, “To block freedom of speech is to trample on human rights, to strangle humanity, and to suppress the truth.” 

With proper treatment and freedom, Liu would have lived on to voice his support for a free society.
While Liu’s advocacy of limited government, democracy, and a free market for ideas won him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010, China’s leadership viewed him as a criminal and refused to allow him to travel to Oslo to receive the award. 

Instead, the prize was placed on an empty chair at the ceremony, a lasting symbol of Liu’s courage in the face of state suppression. 

Beijing also prevented liberal Mao Yushi, cofounder of the Unirule Institute, from attending the ceremony to honor Liu.

The mistreatment of Liu, and other human rights’ proponents, is a stark reminder that while the Middle Kingdom has made significant progress in liberalizing its economy, it has yet to liberate the minds of the Chinese people or its own political institutions.
The tension between freedom and state power threatens China’s future. 

As former premier Wen Jiabao warned in a speech in August 2010, “Without the safeguard of political reform, the fruits of economic reform would be lost.” 

Later, in an interview with CNN in October, he held that “freedom of speech is indispensable for any country.”
Article 33, Section 3, of the PRC’s Constitution holds that “the State respects and protects human rights.” Such language, added by the National People’s Congress in 2004, encouraged liberals to test the waters, only to find that the reality did not match the rhetoric.
The Chinese Communist Party pays lip service to a free market in ideas, noting: “There can never be an end to the need for the emancipation of individual thought” (China Daily, November 16, 2013). 

However, Party doctrine strictly regulates that market. 

Consequently, under “market socialism with Chinese characteristics,” there is bound to be an ever-present tension between the individual and the state.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal (September 22, 2015), Xi Jinping argued that “freedom is the purpose of order, and order the guarantee of freedom.” 

The real meaning of that statement is that China’s ruling elite will not tolerate dissent: individuals will be free to communicate ideas, but only those consistent with the state’s current interpretation of “socialist principles.”
This socialist vision contrasts sharply with that of market liberalism, which holds that freedom is not the purpose of order; it is the essential means to an emergent or spontaneous order. 

In the terms of traditional Chinese Taoism, freedom is the source of order. 

Simply put, voluntary exchange based on the principle of freedom or nonintervention, which Lao Tzu called “wu wei,” expands the range of choices open to individuals.
Denying China’s 1.4 billion people a free market in ideas has led to one of the lowest rankings in the World Press Freedom Index, compiled by Reporters without Borders. 

In the 2016 report, China ranked 176 out of 180 countries, only a few notches above North Korea—and the situation appears to be getting worse. 

Under Xi Jinping’s consolidation of power in preparation for this year’s Party Congress, the websites of liberal think tanks, such as the Unirule Institute, have been shut down, and virtual private networks (VPNs) are being closed, preventing internet users from circumventing the Great Firewall.
Liu’s death is a tragic reminder that China is still an authoritarian regime whose leaders seek to hold onto power at the cost of the lives of those like Liu who seek only peace and harmony through limiting the power of government and safeguarding individual rights.

Liu Xiaobo and the Decline of China

By Bret Stephens

Liu Xiaobo, the dissident writer who became China’s first Nobel Peace laureate when he won the prize in 2010, died in state custody on Thursday, having spent almost the last nine years of his life in prison. 

His death is a tragedy and an outrage. 

It’s also a warning to his jailers.
To wit: No nation that defames and imprisons its best people is going to become great. 

No country that is afraid to let a man such as Liu speak freely can possibly be described as strong. Regimes that are fearsome are brittle, too.
That’s a thought that ought to vex those China enthusiasts who for years have been predicting that the country’s rise to global primacy is merely a matter of time. 

This is geopolitical analysis by way of grade-school math: If the United States, with a gross domestic product of $18.6 trillion, continues to grow at its current sub-2 percent rate a year, and China, with a G.D.P. of $11.2 trillion, grows at its plus-6 percent rate, then China will overtake us in about a decade.
Tick-tick-tick.
Then again, there’s a difference between trend and truth. 

The economist Paul Samuelson predicted in 1961 that the Soviet economy would surpass America’s sometime between 1984 and 1997. 

Japan’s G.D.P. was expected to overtake the United States’ by the year 2000. 

The European Union was another supposed contender for dominance.

A memorial in Hong Kong for Liu Xiabo.

Should China be any different from these also-rans? 

China’s official growth rate has slowed every year this decade; it’s now at its lowest point since the era of the Tiananmen Square massacre. 

Bad loans at Chinese banks are at a 12-year high, while productivity growth is at a 16-year low, according to Bloomberg. 

China’s working-age population is shrinking and lost nearly five million people in 2015 alone. 

Capital outflows from China hit $640 billion last year; China’s upper and middle classes are voting with their real-estate choices.

All this could mean nothing more than that China, like an athlete growing old, is tracing the same arc of most other economies that emerge quickly from poverty only to stall out thanks to rent-seeking elites, rising factory wages, demographic imbalances and so on. 

This is called the middle-income trap, and as the World Bank noted a few years ago, “of 101 middle-income economies in 1960, only 13 became high-income by 2008.”
For China, however, things are likely to be worse. 

Why? 

Liu Xiaobo knew the answer.
Westerners besotted by the “rising China” hypothesis often make the case that while the country’s human-rights record is lamentable, it has no bearing on its economic future. 

Economies, they say, run on inputs, not values. 

If anything, they believe that China’s dictatorship confers advantages in efficiency and decisiveness that fractious democracies can only dream about.
It’s an odd argument. 

Autocracies are sometimes rich but never modern. 

Efficiency can mean doing dumb things quickly. 

Political control over economic resources is a recipe for corruption and capital misallocation. 

To this day Beijing treats its economy as an extension of state propaganda, manufacturing statistics and mistaking trophyism for development.
The core mistake is to assume that values aren’t inputs. 

“The process of abandoning the ‘philosophy of struggle’ was also a process of gradual weakening of the enemy mentality and elimination of the psychology of hatred,” Liu wrote in a courtroom statement that would become his Nobel lecture (delivered in absentia).
“It was this process,” he added, “that provided a relaxed climate, at home and abroad, for Reform and Opening Up, gentle and humane grounds for restoring mutual affection among people and peaceful coexistence among those with different interests and values, thereby providing encouragement in keeping with humanity for the bursting forth of creativity.”
Creativity requires freedom. 

Ideas need room to compete and collide, free of social and legal penalties. 

As economies approach the creative frontier, the need for freedom expands commensurately. 

The gap between available information and necessary information needs to be as narrow as possible. Much of what is economically necessary information is also political information, making censorship and repression incompatible with the requirements of a dynamic economy.

Liu understood that the Chinese model of economic modernization without political reform was destined to fail: The insight is at the heart of the Charter 08 manifesto that landed him in prison. 

“The decline of the current system has reached the point where change is no longer optional,” it warned.

As if to prove it really didn’t get the point of Liu’s teachings, Beijing moved quickly to censor stories about him and expressions of sympathy on the internet. 

But at least one pointed anonymous message got out to the Wall Street Journal reporter Nicole Hong. China boosters, take note:

You want to bury him

bury into the dirt

but you forget

he is a seed.

Huang Xiangmo's money

Australia’s shameful silence on Liu Xiaobo

By Elaine Pearson

Overnight, a Nobel laureate and former professor of literature died from complications of liver cancer. 

He had been imprisoned for more than eight years and appears not to have received genuine medical attention at a municipal hospital until recent weeks, when his illness was well advanced. 

On his deathbed, police guarded his room and barred all visitors except for immediate family members. 

Two foreign doctors were allowed to see him but authorities denied his request to leave the country for medical care.
What had this man done to deserve such degrading treatment? 

And why did a powerful nation like China prevent him from living out his remaining days in dignity and freedom?
Liu Xiaobo was a brilliant academic who wrote on Chinese society and culture with a strong focus on democracy and human rights. 

In other countries, his works would have been published, his ideas debated, and his intellectual contribution to society celebrated. 

But in China, for his efforts Liu only saw the inside of a prison cell.
After the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, Chinese authorities jailed Liu for 21 months for his role in supporting students who had taken part in the peaceful protests.
For a brief period in 1993, Liu lived in Canberra. 

He was reportedly offered asylum by Australian authorities, but turned down the offer. 

After returning to China, authorities imprisoned Liu again for three years in 1996 for his human rights activities.
In December 2008 Liu was detained for his role in co-authoring a pro-democracy manifesto called Charter 08. 

A year later, he was convicted of ‘incitement of subversion of state power’ and sentenced to 11 years in prison. He was incarcerated ever since.
In 2010, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded Liu the Peace Prize. 

China did not allow him to attend the awards ceremony in Oslo. 

Instead, a chair stood empty on the stage as a reminder of China’s unrelenting and cruel repression. 

Angry at the world’s celebration of Liu, Chinese authorities meted out retribution on his wife, Liu Xia, who has been held under house arrest without charge ever since the award ceremony.
After Liu won the Nobel Peace Prize, countries around the world urged China to free him. 

Australia’s then-Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd raised Liu’s case with the Chinese authorities. 

Julie Bishop, then in opposition, wrote an op-ed about Liu urging China to let him attend the ceremony.
But as Liu lay dying in the hospital, there was a shameful silence from Australia’s leaders on Liu’s case. 

Canada, France, Germany, Taiwan, and the US all called on the Chinese authorities to free Liu and allow him and his wife to travel abroad for medical treatment. 

Australia made so no such call.
Perhaps Australian officials thought raising his case publicly would be ineffectual. 

Perhaps they thought the case would not be worth risking China’s ire. 

But they should be reminded of what Liu told a journalist back in 2007:
Western countries are asking the Chinese government to fulfill its promises to improve the human-rights situation, but if there’s no voice from inside the country, then the government will say, ‘It’s only a request from abroad; the domestic population doesn’t demand it.’ 

I want to show that it’s not only the hope of the international community, but also the hope of the Chinese people to improve their human rights situation.
As the Chinese government commits abuses at home without accountability, ratchets up repression in Tibet, Xinjiang and Hong Kong, and abducts people beyond its borders, precisely the kind of pressure Liu called for is needed from both inside and out. 

China’s human rights defenders like Liu are the ones that risk their lives, yet without international support they are even more vulnerable.
Liu was one of thousands of political prisoners in China who have lost their freedom to boldly call for the rule of law, respect for basic rights, and democracy in China. 

Australia should not let his death pass without challenging Beijing on his mistreatment. 

Australia’s leaders should also call upon China’s leaders to allow Liu Xia to leave the country if she chooses and mourn her husband as she sees fit.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull likes to speak of freedom. 

This week in London he said, ‘to defend freedom we cannot give free rein to its enemies’. 

It’s time to stop having those discussions in the abstract and speak up on behalf of courageous people in China such as Liu Xiaobo, especially when they most need it.

Criminal Nation

Liu Xiaobo’s Fate Reflects Fading Pressure on China Over Human Rights
By CHRIS BUCKLEY

Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese Nobel Peace Prize laureate who died of cancer while in state custody, was mourned in Hong Kong on Thursday.

BEIJING — Liu Xiaobo, China’s only Nobel Peace Prize laureate, catapulted to fame in 1989, when the Communist Party’s violent crackdown on protests in Tiananmen Square created an international uproar.
Now, nearly three decades later, Mr. Liu has died of cancer while in state custody, a bedridden and silenced example of Western governments’ reluctanc to push back against China’s resurgent authoritarians.
Mr. Liu’s fate reflects how human rights issues have receded in Western diplomacy with China. 

And it shows how Chinese Communist Party leaders, running a strong state bristling with security powers, can disdain foreign pleas, even for a man near death.
“It’s certainly become more difficult,” said John Kamm, an American businessman and founder of the Dui Hua Foundation, who for decades has quietly lobbied China to free or improve the treatment of political prisoners. 

He said his attempts to win approval for Mr. Liu to leave China for treatment, as Mr. Liu and his wife requested, got nowhere.

“I tried my best. I did everything I could,” he said before Mr. Liu died. 

“Things are pretty difficult right now. It’s hard for me to get the kinds of responses I need.”
These days, major Western governments struggle to get responses from China about prisoners and conditions in Tibet and Xinjiang. 

Western politicians have become less willing to dwell on human rights problems when other issues fill their meetings with Chinese officials.
The United States, Germany and other Western governments did politely prod China to release Mr. Liu from prison and let him go abroad for treatment of his liver cancer, accompanied by his wife, Liu Xia.
A spokesman for Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, issued a statement that “she "would like" a signal of humanity for Liu Xiaobo and his family,” while Trump said nothing publicly about his case, leaving any comment to lower-ranking officials.
Merkel’s statement was a reflection of how the world order has shifted, with the United States under Trump departing from its traditional role as the most vocal advocate of human rights.
Still, Mr. Kamm and others said the shift came many years before Trump entered the White House in January.
“I do not think that the world prior to Jan. 20, 2017, was one rife with robust, consistent diplomatic intervention on behalf of peaceful, independent civil society in China,” said Sophie Richardson, the China director of Human Rights Watch. 

“Taken together, particularly over the 2000s and into the 2010s, you have got progressively less interest on foreign governments in really fighting as hard as they ought to have for systemic change in China.”
In Mr. Liu’s case, Chinese officials have dismissed calls by Western governments as meddling.
Beijing issued video and still images of Mr. Liu in a hospital in northeast China, as if to say: We don’t need lectures about how to take care of our prisoners. 

Beijing ignored advice from a German and an American cancer specialist who visited Mr. Liu, at its invitation, and who said he was well enough to travel for treatment.

A torch parade in honor of Mr. Liu in Oslo on Dec. 10, 2010, the day of the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony. He was imprisoned by then, and his absence at the event was signified by an empty chair.

“If Liu Xiaobo, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was able to win some freedom for half a month — or two weeks or four days or half a day — and could speak out after eight years of silence, that would be intolerable for the government,” said Wu Yangwei, a writer who uses the pen name Ye Du and is a friend of Mr. Liu’s. 

“Ten years ago, it might have been different, there might have been a little hope. But the political atmosphere has shifted.”
Lobbying China over its harsh prison sentences for dissent and its other shackles on citizens’ rights has never been an amicable conversation; progress has long been spotty. 

But Mr. Liu’s case reflects how Western pressure on China’s human rights problems has decreased, while Chinese leaders have become adept at using economic and diplomatic lures and threats to thwart it.
The shifting geopolitics around China and the human rights issue also appeared to be reflected in the disjointed reaction to Mr. Liu’s death from top officials of the United Nations, where China has moved to raise its prominence by increasing financial support and furnishing peacekeeping troops.
The organization’s high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, implicitly criticized China in a condolence statement by describing Mr. Liu as a champion who had been “jailed for standing up for his beliefs.”
But António Guterres, the secretary-general, was more circumspect. 

Asked for a comment, his spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, said Mr. Guterres was “deeply saddened,” but he did not address the circumstances of Mr. Liu’s death or the restrictions on Mr. Liu’s wife. 

“I don’t have anything further to say at this point,” Mr. Dujarric told reporters on Thursday.
In 1989, Mr. Liu was detained for nearly two years after the Chinese government called him a “black hand” who supported the student demonstrators who crowded Tiananmen Square before an armed crackdown. 

Back then, Communist Party leaders railed against Western-inspired subversion and imprisoned leading participants in the protests who hadn’t fled.
Yet China was more vulnerable to pressure, and sometimes made concessions.
It was the world’s ninth-biggest economy in 1989, and needed expertise, investment and technology from advanced countries to begin growing again. 

It did not have a wide circle of countries that would help it thwart Western sanctions and isolation. 

And the party general secretary and later president, Jiang Zemin, appeared eager for affirmation and even friendship from Bill Clinton and other Western leaders.
But since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001 and its economy took off, leaders in Beijing have become increasingly set against making concessions on human rights cases. 

That posture has reflected China’s economic and diplomatic strength. 

But it has also reflected leaders’ longstanding fears that, even with robust growth, broad public support and a powerful police apparatus, they are vulnerable to political foes.
From 1989 to 2008, when Mr. Liu helped start Charter 08, a petition for democratic change, he and other dissenters still hoped that the Communist Party could be coaxed to give citizens greater freedoms, pushed by civic mobilization in China and encouraged by Western governments and groups. 

Even if there were occasional setbacks, many believed expanding market forces and a growing middle class would shape history in their direction and would make the government ultimately accept political liberalization.
“China’s economy is growing quickly, and this economic development is supportive of a political transformation,” Mr. Liu said in an interview in 2004. 

“China’s international environment has seen big changes, and there’d be very strong international support for its political reforms.”
But Mr. Liu was arrested in 2008 and sentenced to 11 years in prison in 2009. 

China’s leader since 2012, Xi Jinping, has overseen an even more comprehensive crackdown on dissent, rights lawyers and independent civil groups. 

Mr. Liu’s supporters have not abandoned their hopes, but they see that the government has gained confidence against critics.
Mr. Kamm of the Dui Hua Foundation said he would continue to present lists of political prisoners to Chinese officials. 

Now he also plans to point out how the government’s treatment of Mr. Liu hurt China’s image, he said.
“I think they have taken an incredible hit on this,” Mr. Kamm said. 

“There are five prisoners on my list tonight that I will use this to try to get out of prison into their loved ones’ arms.”

Political Murder

True honor lies not with China’s rulers but with the man they imprisoned until his death
Washington Post

Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo in April 2008. 

POLITICAL DISSIDENCE is a great, and beautiful, mystery. 

For those living under repressive rule, the path of least resistance is, well, not to resist — to accommodate and survive, or, in less honorable but hardly rare cases, to collaborate. 

And yet, some do choose the more decent and difficult way. 

Out of idealism, necessity, sheer refusal to submit or some unfathomable combination of all three, they stand up, they speak out, they assume risks.
China’s Liu Xiaobo epitomized the dissident tradition, fighting back relentlessly but peacefully against a regime in his country that epitomized modern-day authoritarianism — until he died on Thursday at age 61.
Mr. Liu was born in 1955, amid the horrific throes of the early People’s Republic, and went on to study literature and philosophy, earning his doctorate in 1988. 

Moved by the fall of communism in Europe and the limited opening under Deng Xiaoping in China, he joined the student protests on Tiananmen Square in 1989. 

This conscientious activism earned him a two-year prison sentence. 

Later he served three years in a labor camp for other purported political offenses. 

Mr. Liu’s causes were liberty and democracy, which he considered universally applicable, not Western imports for which his native country was somehow “not ready.” 

His specific demand was that the Chinese Communist authorities accept the need for a constitutional overhaul that would establish elections, rule of law and freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly and of religion.
In December 2008, Mr. Liu joined other intellectuals in publishing Charter 08, a pro-democracy manifesto modeled on the Charter 77 issued by Czech dissidents 31 years earlier. 

Notably, the document not only called upon China’s rulers to enable a better future for their people; it also told the truth about the “gargantuan” price China’s people had paid since the 1949 revolution: “Tens of millions have lost their lives, and several generations have seen their freedom, their happiness, and their human dignity cruelly trampled,” the charter observed.
Forthrightly addressing China’s past, present and future earned Mr. Liu an 11-year sentence, for “inciting subversion of state power,” which began in late 2009 and which he was still serving, albeit on medical parole at a hospital, when he drew his last breath. His steadfast dissidence also earned Mr. Liu the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010, though Beijing refused to let him travel to Oslo for the award ceremony, just as it also refused to let him receive friends and well-wishers in his final days, or to go abroad for medical treatment.
These final indignities were intended to degrade and humiliate, but the attempt was futile and indeed shames those who made it. 

Shortly before Mr. Liu died, the man ultimately responsible for this and so many other abuses in China, Xi Jinping, was basking in the glamour and glory of international politics at the Group of 20 summit in Hamburg. 

Yet throughout Xi’s rule, the true locus of honor in China has been any place of confinement occupied by Liu Xiaobo.

Criminal Nation: Why China Is Afraid Of Ailing Dissident Liu Xiaobo

Since Chicoms won’t let Liu Xiaobo leave China for medical help, he probably will die soon. But his efforts to speak the truth will endure.
By Helen Raleigh

Chinese authorities accuse dying Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo of being one of the most dangerous enemies of the state. 

Yet Liu’s recently leaked picture shows him staring back, very thin and fragile, with a gentle smile. His glasses gave him a bookish look. 

You probably can’t help wondering: what could make this seemingly harmless man public enemy number one in China? 

His “crime”: believing in exercising his human right to free speech. 

That’s a dangerous thing in China.
Before he became a political dissident, Liu was a scholar and a teacher. 

He was among the first generation of Chinese youth to take the national college entrance exam and attend universities following the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). 

After he received a PhD in literature from Beijing Normal University, he became a teacher at the same university.
Besides teaching, he was known to offer sharp opinions that challenged government-sanctioned doctrines and ideology through his many published literature critique pieces. 

Thus he was nicknamed a “dark horse.” 

Liu didn’t considered himself a radical, though. 

In his words, he determined instead merely that, “whether as a person or as a writer, I would lead a life of honesty, responsibility, and dignity.”

He Sacrificed Himself for His Country
The decade from 1980 to 1989 was probably the most liberal period in China’s history since the founding of communist China in 1949. 

China implemented a series of economic and political reforms under pragmatic political leaders, from Deng Xiaoping and Hu Yaobang to Zhao Zhiyang. 

A group of Chinese intellectuals encouraged by the relatively relaxed political atmosphere, including Liu, explicitly advocated that China learn from Western civilization: rule of law, free and open markets, and more personal freedom. 

Liu was a rising star among them, but he wasn’t the most famous.
The year 1989 began as a relatively uneventful year until Hu Yaobang’s unexpected passing in April. Coincidentally, he died right around the Qingming holiday, a traditional Chinese holiday when people pay tribute to their deceased loved ones. 

Hu was regarded as a liberal hero in China. 

Many ordinary Chinese people took to the streets to pay tribute for Hu’s death. 

Gradually, mourning for Hu turned into a movement calling on the Chinese government to grant people more freedom and to apply meaningful anticorruption measures. 

Peaceful demonstrators, mostly students, started occupying Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.
At this time, Liu was a visiting scholar in the United States. 

He could have stayed here, advocating for freedom and democracy in safety and comfort. 

Yet he chose to return to China and join the movement, knowingly putting himself in life-threatening danger. 

By doing so, he followed a long line of intellectuals throughout China’s 2,000-year history who aspired to become “junzi”—virtuous men who are driven by responsibility to their country and to “tianxia” (the world). 

They believed that it’s their responsibility as well as a symbol of their virtue to sacrifice themselves to make their country better.
The rest was history. 

On June 4, 1989, China’s supreme leader Deng Xiaoping ordered the Chinese military to forcefully take back Tiananmen Square and “remove” protestors. 

The crackdown resulted in an unknown number of deaths of the innocent. 

June 4 was a turning point for China as well as for Liu. 

He lost his teaching position and “was thrown into prison for ‘the crime of counter‑revolutionary propaganda and incitement.’”
In Liu’s own words, “Merely for publishing different political views and taking part in a peaceful democracy movement, a teacher lost his lectern, a writer lost his right to publish, and a public intellectual lost the opportunity to give talks publicly. This is a tragedy, both for me personally and for a China that has already seen thirty years of ‘Reform and Opening Up.’”

Repression Led to International Acclaim
Since 1989, Chinese authorities have punished Liu for his various pro-democracy activities by putting him in prison several times. 

In 2008, modeled after Czechoslovakia’s Charter 77, Liu co-authored Charter 08, a manifesto calling for Chinese government to implement things Americans have taken for granted, such as freedom of expression, an independent judiciary, and freedom of association. 

Liu was promptly arrested and later sentenced to 11 years in prison. 

He has been in prison ever since.
What China didn’t expect was that its repression probably helped turn Liu into an internationally renowned political activist. 

In 2010, Norway’s Nobel committee awarded Liu the Nobel Peace Prize. 

Beijing was so furious, it froze diplomatic ties with Norway and heavily censored any Nobel-related news that year.
Liu was the first Chinese citizen to win a Nobel Prize, but he wasn’t allowed to claim it and his wife has since been put under house arrest. 

The picture of an empty chair representing him at the Nobel Prize ceremony is as iconic an image as the photo of the “tank man.” 

Both symbolize the Chinese people’s struggle for freedom.

The Nobel Peace Prize vindicated Liu’s moral and mortal bravery. 

Unfortunately it probably also sealed his fate, because Chinese authorities will never let Liu leave China after he gained such international fame. 

Recently Liu is reported to suffer from late-stage liver cancer but Chinese authorities are refusing to let Liu seek treatment abroad.

‘Hatred Can Rot a Nation’
China has made great strides in economic development. 

Internationally, China has used its newfound wealth and power to buy the silence of human rights critics. 

Many countries who are eager to profit from the world’s second-largest economy have complied by looking the other way. 

Within China, partly due to Chinese government’s censorship and partly by choice, Liu disappeared from many Chinese people’s collective memory. 

Most young people who were born after 1989 don’t even know who he is.
The news of Liu’s illness has renewed people’s interest in him and brought back discussions of his work, his struggle, and the part of China’s history that the government still eagerly suppresses. 

Liu’s ailing picture has cast a long shadow on China’s painstakingly crafted image of a benevolent and progressive global leader. 

Liu said before that he hoped he “will be the last victim of China’s endless literary inquisitions and that from now on no one will be incriminated because of speech.” 

Unfortunately, Liu won’t be China’s last sacrificial lamb. 

China today is less free than back in the 1980s, and the fight for freedom goes on, only becoming more difficult.
Confucius said “Wisdom, compassion, and courage are the three universally recognized moral qualities of a junzi (virtuous man).” 

Liu certainly lives up to that high standard. 

He paid a high price for what he believes in, but he is never bitter. 

When he last had a chance to communicate to the outside world, he titled his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, read by Liv Ullmann, “I have no enemies.”
While maintaining his innocence and that the charges against him are unconstitutional, Liu gave sincere praise to almost everyone he encountered: policemen, prosecutors, and jailers. 

He did so not as a grandstanding gesture, but because he believes “Hatred can rot away at a person’s intelligence and conscience. Enemy mentality will poison the spirit of a nation, incite cruel mortal struggles, destroy a society’s tolerance and humanity, and hinder a nation’s progress toward freedom and democracy. That is why I hope to be able to transcend my personal experiences as I look upon our nation’s development and social change, to counter the regime’s hostility with utmost goodwill, and to dispel hatred with love.”

Since the Chinese authorities won’t let the 61-year-old Liu leave China for medical help, he probably won’t have much time left on this earth. 

But his effort to dispel hatred with love and to never give up speaking the truth has been and will continue to inspire generations to come. 

“History never really says goodbye. History says, ‘See you later.’” 

Chinese people probably have a long way to go before they can speak their minds freely without worrying about government persecution. 

When that day finally arrives, they will remember the name Liu Xiaobo.

Beijing’s Nobel Shame

Dying dissident Liu Xiaobo must be allowed to travel, UK and EU urge China
By Tom Phillips in Beijing

Britain and the European Union have joined a growing chorus of voices calling for China to completely free its most famous political prisoner, the dying Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo.
A spokesperson for the British embassy in Beijing said Britain had “repeatedly expressed serious concern at the treatment of Liu Xiaobo by the Chinese authorities”.
“We continue to urge the Chinese authorities to ensure Liu Xiaobo has access to his choice of medical treatment, in a location of his choice, and to lift all restrictions on him and his wife Liu Xia,” the spokesperson added.
A spokesperson for the EU delegation in Beijing said it had discussed the activist’s case with the authorities and asked “that China immediately grant Mr Liu parole on humanitarian grounds and allow him to receive medical assistance at a place of his choosing in China or overseas.”
In an earlier statement the EU had said it also expected China “to remove all limitations on the movements of Mr Liu’s wife and family members”.
A spokesperson for the Chinese foreign ministry, Geng Shuang, rejected the appeals. 

The calls came one day after two foreign doctors who were allowed to visit the dissident in hospital announced they believed he was well enough to be moved overseas, despite Chinese claims to the contrary.
In the light of that announcement, Jared Genser, a US lawyer who represents Liu and is lobbying for his evacuation, called on Xi Jinping to immediately free his client. 

He said Liu had expressed a desire to receive treatment in Germany or the United States, with hospitals in both countries ready and willing to take him in.
“Xi Jinping should honour a dying man’s wishes to be able to leave China and to obtain better treatment that is available abroad,” and could extend Liu’s life by several weeks, Genser said.
“My view is that not only should this happen, but that this must happen and I also believe that there will be enormous pressure placed on Xi from the international community to relent,” he added.
The Chinese artist Ai Weiwei is also among those calling Liu’s release. 

“This is a historic mistake ... this is going to be remembered the whole world,” he said.

In a statement, the executive director of Pen America, Suzanne Nossel, said “the Chinese government’s morality and humanity” would be tested by its decision to allow Liu to leave China or not. 

“There can be no more powerful indicator of Beijing’s respect for human dignity than their treatment of Liu Xiaobo in this time of need.”
Liu, a veteran democracy activist and writer who became a lifelong campaigner after witnessing the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, was diagnosed with late-stage liver cancer in May while serving an 11-year prison sentence for subversion. 

He is being held, reportedly under police guard, in a hospital in north-east China where authorities insist he is receiving “meticulous treatment”.
Liu was detained in late 2008 for his involvement in a pro-democracy manifesto called Charter 08 and was found guilty of incitement to subvert state power – effectively working to topple China’s one-party state – on Christmas Day the following year.
In 2010 he received the Nobel peace prize for his “unflinching and peaceful advocacy for reform”. 

Unable to attend the award ceremony in Oslo because he was in jail, Liu was represented by an empty chair.